


Asteroids, Betrayals and Fucking

by islasands



Series: Lambski [77]
Category: Adam Lambert (Musician)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-29 21:44:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/691802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/islasands/pseuds/islasands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Much of our life journeys is taken without thinking. We feel our way forward. We don't really have a plan, well not for things such as managing our capacity to inflict or suffer pain. </p><p>The music is Massenet's famous "Méditation", from the opera, Thaïs, by French composer Jules Massenet, performed here by Yo Yo Ma (cello) and Kathryn Stott (piano). </p><p>The cello, to me, evokes more than any other instrument the mourning of a captive bird and the soaring movements it makes when set free. It seemed the right accompaniment to a story about the conflict of emotions, thoughts and instincts in a young man learning to love, himself and others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Asteroids, Betrayals and Fucking

"Méditation" from the opera, Thaïs

 

Massenet

 

  


 

 

They stopped to stretch their legs. Adam walked down the road and stood with his arms resting on a farm gate. In the centre of the field in front of him there stood a large, tall, pale colored plant. Perhaps it was a tussock. In the evening light it was glowing oddly as though revealing its spiritual substance. It reminded him of the burning bush in the bible. In the short time it had taken for his mind to register this thought the sun moved behind the hills and the phantasmic fire went out. Now the plant's spiked foliage looked bleached. In fact it looked so lifeless, compared to the green of the grass and trees lining the perimeter of the field, that he wondered if it was dead. Maybe the bush was a weed. Maybe it had been sprayed by one of those weed killers that the roots of plants unwittingly suck out of the dirt. Drinking their doom. I can identify, he thought.

He went back to the vehicle and joined the others in a trivial conversation about asteroids and how they could and should be diverted from courses taking them too close to earth. It was news to some of them that one of these was currently passing by dangerously close to earth. As each took their turn to speak it occasioned the others to look up at the evening sky. It was too early for seeing stars but the topic called for skyward glances and so they made them. They were enjoying the camaraderie of being somewhere new, of being explorers together. It was invigorating, almost a relief, to be so far from their everyday habitations, pursuits and relationships. It gave them a sense of solidarity that didn't exist when they were socializing back home. Here, standing together on the side of the road in the nowhere of an unknown land, they felt like survivors of something. The bonds of their customary friendships came undone and they became strangers drawn together by a common lostness. Their faces were cast in a new light that made Adam wonder, "What will become of you?", and then, with his eyes narrowing at the distance of life's roads, to ask, "What will become of me?". 

I think I’ve lost my way, he thought, thinking it right in the middle of saying that all good things coming to an end, including planets. He leant his head back and closed his eyes. "Thou shalt not lose thy way," a voice said in his head and he thought of the burning bush and burst out laughing. 

"What's the joke?" someone asked. 

"Nothing." he shrugged, then, "Just us. Little old us." 

"Little old us," his friend repeated. A small silence suddenly flared in their midst as though they were lost in a forest and a match had been struck in the dark, its halo so small that the darkness surrounding them was deepened rather than relieved. A general consensus of resignation took place; there really _is_ such a thing as an ‘over-all scheme of things’ in which sentience matters not a jot. But this sense of existential insignificance quickly wore itself out. They closed ranks against its vast, empty space and blew out the match with laughter. 

"You, my friend," someone said, "you are a human asteroid. You are. You come this close to people's worlds, this close." His friend was using his fingers to demonstrate the closing gap, then at the last moment he splayed his fingers like a fan. "And then. Gone." Adam smiled. He always enjoyed a bit of psychoanalysis at his own expense. "We all are," he said. "Every one of us." This general indictment of shared fallibility made the group feel strong, young and strong and invincible. They felt like artists of individuality. A benign, humorous love for one another's faces took place. They began touching one another, confirming with laughter, smiles and caresses the commonality of their uncertain futures. And out of the evening blue, Adam suddenly wished Sauli was there. He paused as he climbed the step into the vehicle to look back at the countryside. The clouds above the bare hills had darkened. A yellow band of clear sky lay across their shoulders. On one of their slopes a cluster of trees had filled with the ink of a silhouette. Yes, he wished Sauli was with him and was sitting next to him in the bus, sleeping most of the way, his head lolling slightly against the the back of the seat, his hand resting on Adam's knee. 

He sat down and rested his cheek on the window. He put in his earbuds. The song that was playing happened to be one of his and Sauli's favourites but his thoughts roamed elsewhere, lighting like a moth upon the appearance of a man he had met recently in a bar, a man who for the usual reasons - the length of his wrists? the way he rocked back slightly as he talked? the narrowness of his hips? - had stood out from the crowd, and he had instantly wanted to fuck him. He frowned at the memory, examining the necessity of its existence. 

_Cyborg fucking, he thought. That's what it is. Truth assimilation. Making your own truth by sexual acts of dispossession. He imagined what the fuck would have been like, had it taken place, how it would have been like pulling a healthy plant out of the ground so you can eat it right then and there, when its flesh is most fresh and sweet. He thought about that first bite into the fruit of a sexual encounter, the haste to peel away clothing and expose the pith of flesh, the core, the hard kernel. The hard kernel! Yes, that’s the ecstasy, that’s the bitter-sweet ecstasy, - when a man's cock is finally in close proximity to your own and you look down, you both look down, tantalized by their likeness of agency and intent. It’s like a truth looking at itself in a mirror. What is there is to say? What is there to compare?_

_But it's not that - it's never that - that closes the deal. No. It's the unscrupulous honesty of desire. It’s knowing that fucking is as close to despair as it is to ecstasy, as near to filth as it is to purity, as like to repulsion as it is to sensuality. And it’s got nothing to do with making connections. Nothing at all. It’s the most deeply private act. It’s fucking for fucking’s sake. It’s like path of light that the sun or moon creates when it rises over water, a path that does not in fact exist but is still a real path and still leads somewhere. Yes. Fucking is like that. A pathway of light. A reciprocated exchange between horizon and vision, vision and horizon. A pathway that you fuck to smithereens. And no harm is done. No debt is owed._

“Thou shalt not betray.” This commandment, like an intruder, suddenly broke into the room of his thought. He opened his eyes. Someone was offering him a can of drink and he took it and pulled at the tab and heard the faint hiss of air escaping. He clinked cans with the person who had passed him the drink. He drank. But when does betrayal begin, he asked himself, as the cooling liquid ran down his gullet. "It begins when you take me for granted," said a voice. 

_It was Sauli's voice. He had said that to him the night before he left to come on this tour. They were discussing the impact of infidelity on a certain friend's relationship and Adam had raised the question of betrayal's definition. But his interest in the topic was only mildly speculative. He was mentally bathing in the small cloud of splendour that occurred after strenuous fucking. Definitive fucking. Making your fucking mark fucking. Sauli's remark had come out of nowhere. It was very like being hit on the side of the head by a ball. In order to show that he hadn't been hurt and was still in the game, Adam raised up on one elbow and leaned over to impart a kiss. "Your breath smells of hay when you smoke," he said. The kiss, and the stare that accompanied it, was lovingly belligerent._

_"If you take me granted, my love," Sauli said, looking coolly at him, "the night will fall."_

_"What do you mean?"_

_Sauli turned away to extinguish the cigarette and that gesture, that brief turning away, made Adam uneasy. "What do you mean?" he asked again._

_Sauli sat back up. He breathed out the last of the smoke he had inhaled. He smiled at Adam. "It means I won't leave you, unless you do."_

_"Is that some kind of Finnish conundrum?" Adam said._

_"No. It's a warning," Sauli said. He reached over Adam so that he could get the television remote from the bedside table on Adam's side of the bed. The sudden pressure of Sauli's body upon his chest made Adam's arms instinctively throw themselves around him. But Sauli ignored the embrace. He plumped up his pillow and flicked the television on. A reporter was talking to someone about asteroid trajectories. The man was explaining why there was no danger from the one currently passing close to the earth. Adam closed his eyes and listened._

_"Stay," he said suddenly. Sauli looked down at him. "I want you to stay," Adam repeated._

_"I know you do," Sauli said and moved his arm so that Adam could curl up under its protection._

The bus drove on leaving the sunset behind. Adam slept. The asteroid, which up until that moment had not shown any interest in the heavenly bodies lying in the vicinity of its travels, suddenly caught a whiff of a thought-fragrance emanating from a fellow traveller far below. It was a pleasing smell. It reached out a tendril of its life force and touched Adam's mind. Well, here's a thing, it thought, as it went deeper into Adam's subconscious. Adam eyes twitched. He was dreaming about fucking and in his dream the song that was playing in his ears was being sung by his cock, of all things! - and not only that but he was fucking as he floated in space. The melancholy notes of the song suddenly exploded out of his groin and flew all around him, transformed into a flock of tiny yellow birds. They were chirping. They were canaries! His dream self laughed. "Listen to our fuck," he said to Sauli, who was lying beneath him, running his fingers through the stars of a nearby constellation. 

When he woke up, they had arrived at the hotel. He blinked at the lights. He stood up. 

"I just had the best dream of my life," he said to his friend as they walked through the hotel foyer. 

"What? What was it?"

"I have no idea," Adam said. He stared at his friend. "I can't remember." He frowned, trying to remember. "It was about being true to your path," he said. Yes, that was the gist of it. Staying on course. He grinned at his friend. "I think an ejaculation took place." 

And the asteroid? As it wiped its life force clean it smiled to itself. "And in all thy going, thou shalt stay," it said. It sped lightly across the night sky, its potential for destroying and its potential for being destroyed were intact, its life force was humming quietly inside its atoms, and its loneliness was leaving a beautiful trail of speed dust in its wake. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
